The SpaceX Dragon capsule, carrying Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and his three international crewmates on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) today at approximately 4:30 PM IST. This milestone marks Shukla as only the second Indian to journey to space and the first in four decades to reach the orbiting outpost.
Axiom Mission 4 aboard the @SpaceX Dragon docked to the station at 6:31am ET today. Soon the Ax-4 astronauts will open the hatch and greet the Exp 73 crew live on @NASA+. More... https://t.co/XmWYPa4BhT pic.twitter.com/LjjMd7DfmW
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) June 26, 2025
The Ax-4 crew blasted off aboard the Dragon spacecraft, propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket, from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Wednesday. After a carefully controlled 28-hour orbital trip, the autonomously flown capsule met the ISS as both spacecraft glided around 400 km (250 miles) above Earth.
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's pioneering flight is in the footsteps of Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who spent eight days onboard the Soviet Union's Salyut-7 station in 1984. Shukla, in contrast to Sharma, is the first Indian to fly to the ISS and as a pilot in an operational capacity of a commercial mission, a major advance for India's ambitions in human spaceflight, including its Gaganyaan program.
Before the launch, 39-year-old Shukla had said he hoped his mission would motivate the next generation, just like Sharma's had all those decades ago. In a statement from space, he had described getting used to microgravity as "like learning to live again, like a baby" and floating around in the vacuum as "amazing." Recalling the 30-day quarantine before the launch, he had joked, "All I could think was — just let us go.
Wednesday's launch witnessed the Falcon 9 rocket beautifully illuminate the evening sky, leaving behind a blazing yellow cloud across Florida's Atlantic coast. The astronauts, including Shukla, were seen in live footage looking calm in their white-and-black full-bodied suits, safely buckled into the pressurized cabin as the spacecraft climbed to low Earth orbit.
The four-person Axiom 4 crew is led by 65-year-old Peggy Whitson, a retired NASA astronaut and Axiom Space human spaceflight director, who is the US record holder for total time spent in space (675 days). Her crewmates are Shubhanshu Shukla (39) of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (41) of Poland, and Tibor Kapu (33) of Hungary.
This flight is the fourth for Axiom Space out of Houston since 2022, as the firm builds out its private and foreign astronaut missions to low Earth orbit. For Poland, Hungary, and India, it represents a historic return to human spaceflight after more than four decades and their first crewed mission to the ISS.
The Ax-4 crew will stay on the ISS for 14 days, where they will perform around 60 scientific research experiments in space conditions, of which seven will be from India. These Indian experiments include joint research in collaboration with ISRO and NASA on topics such as muscle regeneration, the growth of microalgae, and the impact of microgravity on the human body.
The Wednesday launch also marked the 18th human spaceflight for SpaceX, highlighting its large collaboration with NASA since 2020 that has reopened the US's ability to launch astronauts from home since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Axiom Space, founded by a past NASA ISS program director, is in the process of developing a commercial space station with the intent to replace the ISS upon its projected retirement in about 2030.
Stay informed on all the latest news, real-time breaking news updates, and follow all the important headlines in india news and world News on Zee News.